Few things annoy me more than self-righteous douchecanoes that feel the need to speak up and defend people that are more than capable of doing so for themselves, as if they're trying to assuage some endless deep-seated guilt.

It's why America has become a wasteland of talking heads, trial lawyers, and overreaching government.

RollinThundr wrote on Jan 11, 2013, 14:36:300 million armed US citizens vs a corrupt political agency or takeover, I put my money on the US citizens

Assuming every man, woman, and child will enlist is perhaps a bit of a stretch. But maybe I'm just too cynical about a populace that can't even achieve 50% voter turnout in most years.

RollinThundr wrote on Jan 11, 2013, 14:36:People like to ignore the mental health aspect of it when it's a major reason these incidents are happening and solely blaming the NRA, videogames, the GOP, or guns themselves, that's both dishonest and illogical.

Agreed. I play videogames (including "violent" ones). I take Prozac for depression. And there's a gun in my house. In the 15 years those elements have coincided, I have yet to encounter any sort of desire to shoot up a school and/or movie theater, or kill random people I see.

Of course, treating unstable people like Lanza and Holmes as exceptions to the rule doesn't make for good ratings or sound bites.

RollinThundr wrote on Jan 11, 2013, 14:20:Do you honestly think everyone in the armed forces would follow orders to kill their neighbors & loved ones just because a corrupt political element decided to seize control?

I don't. I prefer to believe that the hearts of our soldiers are the best check and balance against this sort of thing happening.

RollinThundr wrote on Jan 11, 2013, 14:20:Listen, I don't think this is probable, but saying "Oh it could never happen in the US lets ban guns" is naive.

I don't think guns should be banned. Everyone has the right to their own defense, and the police certainly aren't it. You're probably dead by the time they show up.

But this whole "the Second Amendment lets us revolt against the next Hitler/Stalin/Manchurian candidate" argument is ludicrous, and serves as nothing but a distraction from any true meaningful discussion on the matter of gun violence. The fact that it's the island of first resort for a non-trivial portion of the pro-gun side is disturbing.

RollinThundr wrote on Jan 11, 2013, 12:08:You're missing the forest from the trees, a corrupt political faction in the US could push to become a totalitarian state, the only way they would succeed at that is to first strip US citizens of their guns. That's why the 2nd amendment is in place, to prevent that from ever happening.

And do you honestly think you, or any other cabal of armed insurrection, stand any sort of chance should the US decide to turn its current military power on its own citizens? Your pistols and shotguns against guys with M4s, body armor, drones, and cruise missiles. Let me know how that goes. Probably about as well as my last game of XCOM.

As much as I am with you on the heart and soul and purpose of the Second Amendment, one must also concede that it has been rendered obsolete by technological progress and economies of scale. We are already at the full mercy of this government, for better or worse.

The most dangerous people in America are these nutters like Alex Jones, which combine the fantasy of the Second Amendment in the modern age with the mental instability of rampant conspiracist thought.

I thought what damaged the brand was churning out sequels, each one half a game compared to the last.

Honestly, the whole series started declining when they moved onto the PS1 and started emphasizing graphics over story and gameplay. FF7 was such an overhyped, mediocre game, and it mostly goes downhill from there.

This is one of the few series where I'd actually welcome rehashing of old titles over creating new. What they did with FF4 DS was great. I keep hoping FF5 and FF6 are going to follow. The SNES period was the golden age of this series, they ought to look back at it for inspiration.

Silicon Avatar wrote on May 9, 2011, 14:30:He doesn't sound like a pod person, he just sounds like a creative person who needs barriers put around him so he will focus and not wander off into la-la land.

This is typical of the "artist's studio" -- nothing ever gets finished because the creative people are always being creative and want to throw everything in. A business always needs at least one solid business person that's able to keep things in check. So long as you avoid going off the deep end with the whole Bobby Kotick "we want to drain all the fun out of game development" brand of crazy.

I'm reminded of a clip from the recent Blizzard 20th anniversary retrospective, where they had the option to sell out to Interplay (the "creative" game company) or to Davidson and Associates (the "business guys"). In the end they chose Davidson, for precisely the reasons outlined above.

(And yes, I do find it ironic that Blizzard ended up married to Activision.)

First expansion I won't be buying, it went way to casual for me with Wrath of the lich king

Not sure why you'd skip it, then. If you've been paying any attention to the beta at all, they seem to be trying very hard to pull the pendulum back to the center, somewhere between Burning Crusade's brutal endgame and Wrath's anti-social facerolling. If anything they seem to be tilting more toward the BC side, going back to requiring a modicum of actual skill to survive dungeons.

In the next few days we’ll be releasing a minor bug fix patch to version 3.1.1. This sort of patch is very small in size, and we use them to fix specific issues that can’t be hot-fixed. Most patches require a lengthy testing procedure before release, but because this change is focused solely on a client tooltip, its testing process can be accelerated to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

In 3.1.1, the paladin ability Exorcism cannot damage other players, but the player game client does not display this change properly. Patch 3.1.1a will fix the tooltip to display the appropriate text; it also displays an error message when a player tries to use it against other players.

While we have not done many minor bug fix patches to date, we do plan to use them as appropriate in the future to resolve smaller issues rapidly, rather than waiting for a full patch.